Gov. Mitch Daniels, flanked by interim Purdue President Tim Sands, gets a photo of incoming students Monday during a pep rally at Mackey Arena. / By Michael Heinz/Journal & Courier

Written by

On the one hand, you have Purdue’s version of freshman orientation — Boiler Gold Rush — which kicked off Monday with a shoulder-to-shoulder, on-your-feet pep rally in Mackey Arena. You get the band, coaches, the cheerleaders and veterans from the Paint Crew student section leading “Hail Purdue” and giving the A-B-Cs on 1-2-3-4-First-Down, weeks before the first Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium.

On the other, you have the orientation I had 30 years ago this month, with a recitation about scheduling and financial aid and ... zzzzz, what, yeah, yeah, I’m awake ... that eventually wound its way to this era-defining, orientation gem: Look to your left, now look to your right. At least one of you won’t be here in four years.

“I think I had the same thing,” Tim Sands, Purdue’s interim president, said Monday morning after the Boiler Gold Rush din had dispersed for a day of campus tours, fountain runs and various other forms of gold-and-black indoctrination. “Then again in six months, someone generally was out.”

We did all right, back then, getting acquainted with the guys in the next dorm room, finding the off-campus haunts and finding our classes, I guess. (Though I wonder how my first roommate did in life, after unceremoniously exiting our third-floor dorm room right on schedule according to the six-month plan Sands described.)

But sitting in Mackey Arena on Monday, I found myself with my hands out like scales: 30 years ago ... today ... 30 years ago ... today.

Today wins. Hands down.

This week was the first time I’d taken in a piece of Boiler Gold Rush in some way more substantial than catching a guide whisper the myth of the Lion Fountain or bumping into a crowd outside Discount Den, as someone explains the concept of a Den Pop.

But if you ever worry about the Purdue brand among students and alumni —or wonder how it gets ingrained so quickly — well, you should check out the Boiler Gold Rush pep rally next year.

(Page 2 of 2)

Baseline to baseline, top to bottom at Mackey Arena, Purdue has figured out how to do it right. (There has to be some sort of Greater Lafayette Community of Choice application or translation for what’s going on around campus this week, right?)

“That was awesome. This place is already awesome,” Jake Clouse, a freshman from Hobart, said after the rally. “I’m new, but this really feels like my time.”

Actually, there’s a lot of new and a lot of orientation going on at the West Lafayette campus about now.

That includes this one guy named Mitch Daniels.

Decked in a Block P ball cap (color: black) and a “Boiler Up” T-shirt (status: tucked in), Gov. Daniels told the new freshmen — his “classmates,” he called them — that he was right there in the orientation mix. That meant right down to admitting that Monday’s rally was his first time in Mackey Arena. (“I’ve seen it a thousand times on TV, I’d guess, but never been inside,” he’d say later. “Great place.”)

Daniels won’t formally take over as Purdue’s president until January, when his term is up as governor. But courtside at Mackey, after the rally, he said he’s been making good on a promise he made on the day he was introduced as the next president. Specifically, that was to spend as much time on campus as possible — from boxed lunch gatherings with faculty to even more informal settings with student leaders.

“Whenever I can carve out a day. I don’t take much vacation, so I sort of use it that way,” Daniels said. “It’s been a mixture of very intensive briefings. There’s so many people to meet and so many activities.

“I want to understand what people’s jobs are and how we can help them do it better. And that will go on, really, indefinitely, but I want to do as much as I can now when I have the chance.

“I’ve said I know I can’t arrive fully ready, but I’d rather get here in third grade rather than kindergarten.”

At the same time, Sands said he was still getting acclimated to an interim position as president — a job that lasts from mid-July to January. Then he’ll return to his role as provost, the university’s top academic post. He compared the half-year appointment to running a middle leg of a 4x400 relay — keep running, don’t drop the baton and get ready for a clean pass to Daniels in January.

“Because you know he’ll be running, waiting for the baton at the end,” Sands said.

That starts with a good orientation. So far, it sounds as if Daniels is shaping out for himself something every bit as good as Boiler Gold Rush.